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Makoto Fujimura. Golden Sea

9 May — 8 Jun 2013 at the Dillon Gallery in New York, United States

14 May 2013

Makoto Fujimura, Cloud Vision - Oyster Shell

Dillon Gallery is pleased to announce “Golden Sea,” an exhibition of internationally renowned artist Makoto Fujimura. The exhibition of new works coincides with the publication of Fujimura's first retrospective monograph, as well as his biographical documentary, all of the same name. The exhibit will showcase the monumental Golden Sea series, three large Walking on Water paintings, as well as Messaien, a painting completed in collaboration with pianist Molly Morkoski at Le Poisson Rouge.

Julie Hamilton writes:

Trained in the techniques of Japanese Nihonga, Makoto Fujimura offers a seasoned yet innovative vision in […]Golden Sea at Dillon Gallery, with vanguard approaches to traditional materials. This midcareer exhibit testifies to Fujimura’s significant transition in his artistic career, approaching a new horizon in his visual aesthetic by reimagining possibilities in contemporary art. Ever-excavating his intuitive vision through process-driven methods, Fujimura credits his inspiration for these works to phenomenological experimentation with fresh techniques and materials.

I consider this exhibition to be more autobiographical than others, emitting Fujimura’s lyrical confessions through both the brilliant malachite and gold in his Golden Sea, as well as the grisaille shadows in his Walking on Water—Flight […] Four of the featured paintings for this show were made extrinsically to his Soliloquies (2009) Four Holy Gospels (2011), and QU4RTETS (2012) exhibitions. These pieces were created concurrently with those collections, but are peripheral in their subject matter. These marginal paintings could be considered autobiographically revelatory of Fujimura’s central themes: sublimity and pathos, community and isolation, revelation and ambiguity, generativity and absence, articulation and silence—essentially paradox. While Fujimura avoids concrete pictorial realities in this exhibition, his dance-like movements through form and color convey paradox as a way of life by navigating beyond apparent binaries.

Recent exhibitions include Takashimaya Gallery in Tokyo, MOBIA (Museum of Biblical Art) in New York, The Imperial Belvedere Palace Museum in Vienna, and “QU4RTETS”, a collaboration with artist Bruce Herman, theologian Jeremy Begbie, and composer Christopher Theofanidis, exhibiting at Baylor, Duke, and Yale Universities, Gordon College, traveling to the United Kingdom and Asia, revolving around T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, a project of the Fujimura Institute.

Dillon Gallery is a contemporary, cross-disciplinary art space located in Chelsea, New York. Through artist representation, exhibitions, and collaboration, Dillon Gallery is most noted for supporting artists working outside the Western canon and disciplines not often associated with traditional art galleries such as architecture, design, music, scent, and theater.